James G. Abourezk Quotes

The Drug War has arguably been the single most devastating, dysfunctional social policy since slavery.

Not since the collapse of the attempt to prohibit the ingestion of alcohol has our liberty been in such danger as it now is from the misnamed “war on drugs.”

Drug prohibition enriches criminals and creates an artificially inflated price that lures young people into the drug trade.... We have created a drug exception to the Constitution.

Incarcerating people for their [drug] consumption choices has the consistency of arresting a survivor of suicide for attempted murder.

The old system, the War on Drugs, was a train wreck.

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis.

I was trying in 'The Power of the Dog' to write a brutally accurate in-your-face, if you will, description of 30 years in the war on drugs. And the effect that that had on people.

If its not worth spending everything it takes, it's not a war [on drugs].

We've been fighting this war on drugs for 60 or 70 years and haven't gotten anywhere yet.

The war on drugs is all about money and power, the money and power of politicians, bureaucrats, police and drug dealers.

The real victim of the war on drugs might be the Constitutional rights of the American people.

I inherited the War on Drugs from a former president who inherited it from a president who also inherited it from a former president. I’m not sure who it is that we are fighting but I know we are not winning.

We need to repeal the whole war on drugs. It isn’t working. We have already spent over $400 billion since the early 1970s, and it is wasted money

The war on drugs has failed. Its failure has been so categorical and self-evident that the statement itself is bromidic. By any reasonable metric of success—addiction rates, violence, the availability of drugs in our schools— it’s clear that our 40-year jihad against certain plants and chemicals has done far more harm than good.

So many people view the war on drugs as a failure, as something that was perhaps intended and carried out with good intentions but very badly executed.

The war on drugs - a big-government product if there ever was one - has been wildly unsuccessful, by any metric.

The war on drugs has made government more powerful, citizens less free, and hasn't helped users or addicts.

The War on Drugs employs millions - politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military - that probably couldn't find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners.

I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources - an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates.

The entire American media apparatus bought into the drug war - which is an enormously damaging and costly undertaking for this country - and there wasn't enough critical reporting about it and that's why it's gotten out of hand.

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class.

The messenger matters. When people of modest means complain about inequality, it usually gets written off as class warfare, but when billionaires complain, the problem is redefined.

The men of middling property and poor men can never be safe in a mixed representation with the men of over-grown property.

The war on drugs has produced about 10,000 additional homicides a year.

The Drug War is probably the worst scourge that has ever been visited upon this country.